The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (26 page)

Francis Weston, who was a popular young man at court, and, like Norris, a member of the king’s household, had not previously been the subject of royal enquiry. Anne’s words damned him and before nightfall he found himself a prisoner in the Tower. She also discussed her interactions with Smeaton, saying that she had once found him looking sorrowful standing by the window in her chamber. He refused to answer when she asked why he was sad and, annoyed, Anne had declared that ‘you may not look to have me speak to you as I should do to a nobleman, because you be an inferior person’. Smeaton then replied, ‘No, no, madam, a look sufficed me, and thus fair you well.’ While it appears that Smeaton may have had a crush on Anne, this is not evidence of adultery. Anne spoke innocently enough of her brother, saying when it was confirmed that he was also present in the Tower that ‘I am glad that we both be so nigh together’. This again could be misconstrued. Anne made no mention of the remaining three men arrested during the investigations: William Brereton, Sir Richard Page and Thomas Wyatt. Page and Wyatt were never brought to trial but Brereton was tried and suffered alongside the rest.

Anne herself was particularly concerned about her mother’s reaction to events, lamenting to William Kingston, ‘O my mother, thou will die for sorrow.’
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Given their close relationship, Elizabeth must have been distraught at the arrest of her children although there is no evidence that either she or her husband attempted to intercede on their behalf. It may be that both Elizabeth and Thomas had their own more immediate troubles as, immediately following the arrests, rumours spread throughout Europe that they too had been arrested for a role in Anne’s adultery.
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The couple may well have been fearful of imprisonment, which was a very real threat: five years later Henry would imprison several members of the family of his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, for her lack of chastity at the time of her marriage. It may however have been this threat which caused Thomas to agree to sit in judgement against his children at their trials, a decision which must have been devastating for him.
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Many people in England were prepared to believe the worst against Anne, who had never been popular. However, according to Alexander Ales, even Anne’s enemies recognised the evidence as circumstantial, admitting that

it is no new thing, they said, that the King’s Chamberlains should dance with the ladies in the bedchamber. Nor can any proof of adultery be collected from the fact that the queen’s brother took her by the hand and led her into the dance among the other ladies, or handed her to another, especially if that person was one of the royal chamberlains. For it is a usual custom throughout the whole of Britain that ladies married and unmarried, even the most coy, kiss not only a brother but any honourable person, even in public.

In spite of the flimsy evidence Norris, Weston, Brereton and Smeaton were tried and convicted of adultery with Anne on 12 May. Anne and her brother, due to their status, were tried separately within the Tower itself on 15 May. Lady Boleyn and Lady Kingston accompanied the queen to her trial and sat through proceedings before returning with her to her prison.
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Anne sat on a special scaffold which had been built for the occasion, facing her peers, who were led by her own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. Anne’s own father and her former love, Henry Percy, sat in judgement on her, something that can have been easy for none of them, even Norfolk, who disliked his niece. Few details survive of Anne’s trial although she defended herself vehemently. Sir John Spelman, who was present, claimed that ‘all the evidence was of bawdery and lechery, so that there was no such whore in the realm’, something which is suggestive of the preconceived view that many present had of her. The list of official charges makes scurrilous reading, with claims that she, ‘depising her marriage, entertaining malice against the king, and following daily her frail and carnal lust, did falsely and traitorously procure by base conversation and kisses, touching gifts, and other infamous incitations, divers of the king’s daily and familiar servants to be her adulterers and concubines’.
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She was supposed to have ‘allured’ her brother ‘with her tongue in the said George’s mouth’, as well as plotting the death of the king so that she would be free to marry a lover. The charges against Anne were outrageous, but the result of the trial was a foregone conclusion. As he pronounced sentence that his sister’s daughter should be burned or beheaded ‘at the king’s pleasure’, there were tears in Norfolk’s eyes. Henry Percy was suddenly taken ill and unable to participate in George’s trial, which followed and in which he was also found guilty.

Anne’s five ‘lovers’ were beheaded together on 17 May. As was customary, the condemned men were permitted to make a speech, with George declaring,

Christian men, I am born under the law, and judged under the law, and die under the law, and the law hath condemned me. Masters all, I am not come hither for to preach, but for to die, for I have deserved to die if I had twenty lives, more shamefully than can be devised for I am a wretched sinner, and I have sinned shamefully, I have known no man so evil, and to rehearse my sins openly it were no pleasure to you to hear them, nor yet for me to rehearse them, for God knoweth all; therefore, masters all, I pray you take heed by me, and especially my lords and gentlemen of the court, the which I have been among, take heed by me, and beware of such a fall, and I pray to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, three persons and one God, that my death may be an example unto you all, and beware, trust not in the vanity of the world, and especially in the flattering of the court.
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George continued in a similar vein, recognising, as was expected, his worthiness to die, but significantly, not admitting any guilt in the offences for which he died. On the scaffold, none of the men admitted any guilt, with Brereton going so far as to deny any wrongdoing with Anne, declaring, ‘I have deserved to die if it were a thousand deaths, but the cause wherefore I die judge not: But if ye judge, judge the best.’
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The deaths of the five men would have caused Anne to realise that her death was now a certainty. That same day she received word that her marriage had been annulled, either due to her relationship with Henry Percy, or the king’s earlier affair with Mary Boleyn. Either way, it cannot have escaped Anne that she was to die for committing adultery when, legally, she had never been married at all.

Such legal niceties were irrelevant for Henry who was already planning his wedding to Jane Seymour. Anne spent the last few days left to her preparing herself for death. She took steps to show the world her innocence of the crimes of which she was convicted, swearing on the sacrament on 18 May before Kingston that she was innocent. After the sentence was passed, Anne was calmer, even making little jokes such as declaring on the evening before her death that she would be known to posterity as ‘Queen Anne Lack-Head’. Her execution was slightly delayed by the king making one small concession to the woman that he had previously loved by sending for an expert swordsman from the Continent to carry out her execution. This was a relief to Anne, who declared to Kingston that ‘I heard say the executioner is very good, and I have a little neck’ before putting her hands around her neck and laughing.

On the morning of 19 May Anne stepped out of her lodgings and made her way to Tower Green, where a crowd of grandees had assembled. Once she was standing on the scaffold, a composed Anne turned to face the crowd, declaring,

Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.
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Lady Boleyn was probably one of the four ladies permitted to accompany Anne to the scaffold.
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One of these ladies, weeping, then stepped forward to cover Anne’s eyes with a cloth before the executioner stepped forward.
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There was no need for a block and, instead, Anne knelt on the straw of the scaffold. While she was praying the headsman stepped up behind her, severing her head with one stroke of the sword.

According to a contemporary account by Lancelot de Carles, following Anne’s death her ladies, who were half-dead themselves with grief, but unwilling to let anyone else touch the corpse, wrapped the body in a white covering and carried her to be buried in the nearby chapel within the Tower, laying her next to her brother. If, as seems likely, Anne Tempest Boleyn was indeed one of these ladies, she may have warmed to her niece in the days that they spent in the Tower, at least, as Sir William Kingston did, admiring the queen for the bravery that she showed in the face of her death.

The fall of Anne Boleyn did not quite bring about the fall of the Boleyn family, although the death of the childless George Boleyn did mean that the direct male line of the family ended with the deaths of Thomas Boleyn and his brothers, none of whom had living sons.

Queen Anne’s two aunts by marriage, Anne Tempest Boleyn and Elizabeth Wood Boleyn, both disappeared into obscurity following their niece’s death. Since Elizabeth Wood Boleyn was present at court during her niece’s time as queen, it is probable that she is the Lady Boleyn who found herself caught up in a scandal concerning the king’s niece, Lady Margaret Douglas. Soon after Anne Boleyn’s fall it was discovered that Margaret, who was the daughter of Henry’s sister, Margaret, Queen of Scots, had secretly married Anne Boleyn’s uncle, Lord Thomas Howard. In the examination of one Thomas Smith in relation to this, he declared that Howard would wait until Lady Boleyn was gone from Margaret’s chamber, leaving only the Duchess of Richmond to attend the king’s niece before he would secretly visit her.
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Although Elizabeth was quite innocent in the affair, it was dangerous for her name to be mentioned in connection with what the king considered treason.

She was still active in February 1537 when one Richard Southwell wrote to Thomas Cromwell from Yarmouth, concerned that he had heard that Sir James Boleyn, through his wife, was campaigning for one of his offices in the town.
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This suggests that Elizabeth had remained at court, while her husband was, at that point, in East Anglia. Elizabeth Wood Boleyn was still living in 1553 when her husband arranged a settlement of some of his lands, but she had died by the time of her husband’s death in 1561.
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The couple probably lived comfortably at Blickling, which they acquired following the death of Jane Rochford, who had a life interest.

Sir James Boleyn’s will demonstrates that he died wealthy and on close terms with many of his nephews and nieces.
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He made his will in August 1561, aware that he was ‘naturally born to die and pass from this transitory life’. He was concerned that, since he died without children, his bequests would be challenged by his kin. He therefore begged his heirs ‘to be content and satisfied with such things as are by me given and bequeathed to them in this my same last will without trouble or vexation of any of them against other for my said goods or lands’. James left personal bequests to his great-niece, Queen Elizabeth I, which strongly suggest that they considered each other to be kin, with James declaring that ‘I give and bequeath to my most gracious sovereign lady the Queen’s most excellent majesty my basin and ewer all gilt and my written book of the revelations of Saint Bridget. Most humbly beseeching her highness to read and will so ponder the same humbly given.’ Rather than being a criticism of the queen for her recent suppression of the Bridgettine House at Syon, it would appear that the gift of the book, and the suggestion that his great-niece read it, was a friendly gesture, particularly since James relied on the queen’s support for his favourite niece, Elizabeth Shelton.

Elizabeth Shelton, the daughter of Anne Boleyn Shelton, remained unmarried. By 1561, when she was approaching middle age, she had fallen on hard times. Following his bequest to the queen, James, added, ‘Beseeching her said highness to give unto my niece Elizabeth Shelton having at this day nothing certain wherewith to comfort or relieve herself the four hundred pounds owing to me by her grace.’ This £400 was due to James from an annuity that the queen had granted him, to be paid out of the income of a manor in Kent. He then, hopefully, declared, ‘Which sums I do for very charity grant and give as before unto my said niece right humbly beseeching her good grace to extend her mercy and goodness unto that poor gentlewoman now utterly destitute and unprovided of friendship or place.’ Given that the annuity died with James, only the arrears were actually his to bequeath, not any future income. However, he clearly felt that the queen was likely to benefit a fellow Boleyn daughter, who had fallen on hard times. He also took further steps to ensure that Elizabeth Shelton was no longer quite so destitute or unprovided for, leaving her the sum of 200 marks to be paid in annual instalments of 40 marks. That Elizabeth Shelton was reliant on her uncle and the queen for support suggests that she was, by that time, estranged from the wider Shelton family. Further details on Elizabeth Shelton’s life are scant, although she was probably able to live reasonably comfortably on James Boleyn’s bequest, particularly since the queen also took pity on her, granting her an annuity of £30 shortly after James’s death.
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Anne Tempest Boleyn’s later life was taken up with arranging the marriages of her four daughters: Mary, Elizabeth, Ursula and Amy. These Boleyn daughters married into the local gentry and lived unremarkable lives, far removed from their famous first cousin. Mary, the eldest, married James, the fifth son of Robert Brampton of Brampton. The second, Elizabeth, married Thomas Payne of Iteringham.
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The third, Ursula, married a William Pigge of Essex, while the youngest, Amy, married twice, taking first Sir Edward Whinborough and then Nicholas Shadwell of Bromhill as her husbands. By her second marriage Amy is believed to have been an ancestress of the late seventeenth-century poet and playwright, Thomas Shadwell. Anne Tempest Boleyn’s date of death is not recorded.